Clearwire Opens Portland Network

Clearwire has finally launched a second city: Portland, Ore., close by to Intel’s headquarters in Beaverton, finally gets WiMax coverage. This is the first network under the Clear brand, the service that’s being deployed by the new Clearwire, a merger of the old Clearwire and the WiMax assets of Sprint Nextel. Over 700 sq mi are covered in the metropolitan region.

It was a poorly kept secret that Intel employees have been using WiMax service in the area for a couple of years, starting at their campus and eventually expanding out as the network was lit up for testing. Portland is an ideal early commercial market, however, because there’s such a mix of old and new infrastructure, as well as suburbs and something like exurbs/rural not far from the city’s boundaries due to an urban growth boundary.

From what I can tell, the impetus to get a city-wide Wi-Fi network (started by MetroFi, but never completed) was because of the uneven ability to get high-speed broadband. Clearwire’s 768 Kbps to 6 Mbps residential service is price from $20 to $40 per month, which might be higher in some cases than comparable cable or DSL–but only if that cable or DSL is available. Business services may be far cheaper than landline offerings, while mobile and fixed bundles are much cheaper than anything the cell and wireline broadband companies can offer together so far.

Portland is served by Qwest, which is way behind in offering fiber-connected services, although it’s finally rolling them out. Some of the suburbs are handled by Verizon, which is offering Fios in some places, its fiber-to-the-home service. (GTE once had parts of Washington and Oregon, and that operation was eventually folded into Verizon.)